Part 8 (1/2)
I think if your madjesty will have these rules and regulations printed on a blue pasteboard card in big red letters and hung up all over everywhere you will be able, your h. r. h., to unbait this terrible nuisance.
Yoors trooly, THE UNWISEMAN.
P.S. It may happen, your h. r. h., that some of your subjex can't help themselves in this aitch dropping habit, and it would therefore be mercyful of you to provide letter boxes on all the street cornders where they could drop their aitches into without breaking the rules of your high and mighty highness.
Give my love to the roil family.
Yoors trooly, THE UNWISEMAN.
”There,” he said when he had scribbled the letter off with his lead pencil. ”If the King can only read that it ought to make him much obliged to me for helping him out of a very bad box. This Island ain't so big, map or no map, that they can afford to have it smothered in aitches as it surely will be if the habit ain't put a stop to. I wonder what the King's address is.”
”I don't know,” said Whistlebinkie with a grin. ”He and I ain't never called on each other yet.”
”Is King his last name or his first, I wonder,” said the Unwiseman, scratching his head wonderingly.
”His first name is Edward,” said Mollie. ”It used to be Albert Edward, but he dropped the Albert.”
”Edward what?” demanded the Unwiseman. ”Don't they call him Edward Seventh?”
”Yes they do,” said Mollie.
”Then I guess I'll address it to Edward S. King, Esquire, Number Seven, London--that's where all the kings live when they're home,” said the Unwiseman.
And so the letter went addressed to Edward S. King, Esquire, Number Seven, London, England, but whether His Majesty ever received it or not I do not know. Certainly if he did he never answered it, and that makes me feel that he never received it, for the King of England is known as the First Gentleman of Europe, and I am quite sure that one who deserves so fine a t.i.tle as that would not leave a polite letter like the Unwiseman's unanswered. Mollie's father was very much impressed when he heard of the Unwiseman's communication.
”I shouldn't be surprised if the King made him a Duke, for that,” he said. ”It is an act of the highest statesmans.h.i.+p to devise so simple a plan to correct so widespread an evil. If the Unwiseman were only an Englishman he might even become Prime Minister.”
”No,” said the Unwiseman later, when Mollie told him what her father had said. ”He couldn't make me Prime Minister because I haven't ever studied zoology and couldn't preach a sermon or even take up a collection properly, but as for being a Duke--well if he asked me as a special favor I might accept that. The Duke of Me--how would that sound, Mollie?”
”Oh it would be perfectly beautiful!” cried Mollie overwhelmed by the very thought of anything so grand.
”Or Baron Brains--eh?” continued the Unwiseman.
”That would just suit you,” giggled Whistlebinkie. ”Barren Brains is you all over.”
”Thank you, Fizzled.i.n.kie,” said the Unwiseman. ”For once I quite agree with you. I guess I'll call on some tailor up in London and see what it would cost me to buy a Duke's uniform so's to be ready when the King sends for me. It would be fine to walk into his office with a linen duster on and have him say, 'From this time on Mister Me you're a Duke.
Go out and get dressed for tea,' and then turn around three times, bow to the Queen, whisk off the duster and stand there in the roil presence with the Duke's uniform already on. I guess he'd say that was American enterprise all right.”
”You'd make a hit for sure!” roared Whistlebinkie dancing up and down with glee.
”I'll do it!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Unwiseman with a look of determination in his eyes. ”If I can get a ready-made Duke's suit for $8.50 I'll do it.
Even if it never happened I could wear the suit to do my gardening in when I get home. Did your father say anything about this being England or not?”
”Yes,” said Mollie. ”He said it was England all right. He's been here before and he says you can always tell it by the soldiers walking around with little pint measures on their heads instead of hats, and little boys in beaver hats with no tails to their coats.”
”All right,” said the Unwiseman. ”I'm satisfied if he is--only the man that got up that map ought to be spoken to about making it pink when it is only a dull yellow dusty gray, and only four inches long instead of five miles. Some stranger trying to find it in the dark some night might stumble over it and never know that he'd got what he was looking for.
Where are we going to from here?”
”We're going straight up to London,” said Mollie. ”The train goes in an hour--just after lunch. Will you come and have lunch with us?”
”No thank you,” replied the Unwiseman. ”I've got a half dozen lunches saved up from the s.h.i.+p there in my carpet bag, and I'll eat a couple of those if I get hungry.”